For his just-dropped seventh album, Texas singer Wade Bowen decided to go in a different direction. For starters, instead of brainstorming about an album title for weeks, he went with the self-titled approach -- a rarity for an established country artist.

"I had a few different ideas for the title that were floating around, but none of them really stuck," he tells Billboard. "I kept listening to the record, and I thought, 'Don't do the normal thing. Go against the grain.'"